More than 1/4 of hospital emergency rooms in non-rural areas have closed in the past two decades

More than a quarter of urban/suburban hospital emergency rooms have closed in the past two decades, researchers have found.

The Journal of the American Medical Association published the study, titled "Factors Associated With Closures of Emergency Departments in the United States." The researchers found that the number of non-rural emergency rooms declined from 2,446 to 1,779 between 1990 and 2009. That's a decline of more than 27 percent.